Camp NaNoWriMo – Words: I love them

50K and the light at the end of the tunnel

April 22, 2014 by Jackie Dana

I’m writing like a fiend.

Despite all odds, I have managed to write every single day this month. Even when I ended up in the ER, through the death of a pet and the adoption of a new one, and the last minute frantic planning of WordCamp Austin, I have found time to put words down on virtual paper, and to stay at or above “par” almost every day.

For proof, here’s today’s stats:

The diagonal line represented “par”, or the total number of words I needed to log in order to stay on track to reach 50K by April 30. Each bar is the total wordcount to date, and whether I was above or below par by that day.

As you can see, I’ve cut it close. When I did NaNoWriMo last November, even with traveling out of the country for a week I made much better progress:

I attribute the differences to a few things. Of course it goes without saying that the chaotic life I’ve led this month has hurt me. Beyond that, though, I think it was easier to write the first time because it was my first time doing NaNo; it was a brand new concept and I was discovering things and inventing characters constantly, which kept me excited; and perhaps most of all, there was an active community of fellow writers who had write-ins, and chatted a lot on forums and on Facebook, and we received almost daily writing encouragement from novelists. This time it was much more of a solo effort and much of my writing has focused on solving plot holes or character development, which is both more challenging and less thrilling than the original spurt of creative energy.

Even so, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished so far, as my characters continue to surprise and delight me, and most days I don’t know what I’ll be writing until it’s already completed.

One thing I have discovered, though, is seeing that graph and the objective total I need to reach every day has caused me on many occasions to push a little harder. What, only 1200 words today? Come on, you can make it to 1500. You’re below par, keep writing until you reach it. And even though the numbers are ultimately meaningless, challenging myself in this way has brought about some fantastic bits of writing. “Just 200 more words” has sometimes generated a gem.

For now, the biggest question is, can I make it to 50K with a very long, exhausting 4 day weekend ahead?

Stay tuned, and we’ll all find out together! 🙂

Camp NaNoWriMo: Not one, but many challenges

March 14, 2014 by Jackie Dana

A true writer can’t resist a writing challenge.

It takes a crazy person to pile them on, one on top of another. 🙂

About a week ago I decided to commit to doing Camp NaNoWriMo, a somewhat more laid-back version of the November National Novel Writing Month, where you can choose a wider variety of things to write and can make your own word count goal.

Back in November, I had participated in NaNoWriMo proper, and wrote 71,664 words towards a brand new novel during those 30 days, without missing a single day. Since that time I have engaged in the perhaps more painful and difficult task of editing it into an actual, you know, readable piece of writing with good characters, a logical plot, suspense… the kind of things that are hit or miss during a marathon month of writing. In November I created some amazing gems and a lot of stinkers.

I’ve made amazing progress along the way, and the novel, while not complete, is significantly better than it was on December 1st. One thing that happened is that I had to cut a lot of great scenes with peripheral characters whose company I had grown to enjoy. Those characters told me that they’d like their own shot at a novel, so Camp NaNoWriMo will allow me to write the first novel’s sequel. That presents my first challenge.

But wait… how can I think of writing a sequel with the first novel still incomplete? With that, I encounter my second challenge. In the next 16 days, can I finish a rough edit of the first novel so that all of the plot points, climax and resolution are knocked out, so they don’t hang over my head?

water bottle — Photo credit: David Ian Roberts (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

To complicate matters even further, I have just agreed to participate in a 30 day blogging challenge, inspired by one of my colleagues at Automattic. So, for as long as I can manage it, I’m going to try to post here every day in April, almost certainly about my experiences with Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ll tag all related posts ‘NaNoWriMo’ if you wish to follow my progress.

So in April, expect to hear a lot of ramblings about the highs and lows of writing a novel in a month. If you’re one of my blog followers, feel free to cheer me on (and provide whatever the writer’s equivalent is to a bottle of water for a marathon runner).

There may also be an occasional photo of my pets. After all, it’s not their fault I’m a crazy writer. 🙂